maximum of life by the correlative unseen world.

There seems to be a certain sort of rigorous logical consistency
in this daring speculation; but really the propositions of which
it consists are so far from answering to anything within the
domain of human experience that we are unable to tell whether any
one of them logically follows from its predecessor or not. It is
evident that we are quite out of the region of scientific tests,
and to whatever view our authors may urge we can only languidly
assent that it is out of our power to disprove it.

[7] See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II. pp. 142-148.


The essential weakness of such a theory as this lies in the fact
that it is thoroughly materialistic in character. It is currently
assumed that the doctrine of a life after death cannot be
defended on materialistic grounds, but this is altogether too
hasty an assumption. Our authors, indeed, are not philosophical
materialists, like Dr. Priestley,--who nevertheless believed in a
future life,--but one of the primary doctrines of materialism
lies at the bottom of their argument. Materialism holds for one
thing that consciousness is a product of a peculiar organization
of matter, and for another thing that consciousness cannot
survive the disorganization of the material body with which it is
associated. As held by philosophical materialists, like Buchner
and Moleschott, these two opinions are strictly consistent with
each other; nay, the latter seems to be the inevitable inference
from the former, though Priestley did not so regard it. Now our
authors very properly refuse to commit themselves to the opinion